The invention relates to the field of furniture for recreational vehicles including self-contained motorized vehicles in addition to trailers hauled by motor vehicles, and more particularly to a folding multimodal sofa bed for recreational vehicles that can be converted from a bed to a sofa facing in either of two opposite directions when deployed as a sofa, and when not in use as a bed or sofa can be stowed out of way to maximize the useable floor space of the recreational vehicle.
In the last few years, a style of recreational vehicles and trailers (hereinafter “RVs”) having an extra wide rear door or doors that swing open or drop down to permit dune buggies, two, three and four-wheel motorcraft, and other items to be carried inside the RV, or at least a rear section of an RV, during travel, and then unloaded, has become more popular. In some of these RVs, a swing down rear door will form a floor of a deployable patio area (e.g. a screened in room) that extends over the swing rear down door.
After the RV user arrives at the site, the wide door or doors of the RV are opened and the carried items can be moved out of the RV. In order to maximize the space inside of the RV available for storing these various items, tables, seating, bedding, and the like are best moved out of the way and stowed away. In order to set up the tables, seating, beds, etc., after the carried items are moved out of the RV, the user will typically need to spend a considerable amount of time and effort to remove the tables, seating, beds, etc., from their stowed location in the RV and setting them up. When the user is ready to go, or wishes to store items back in the RV, he or she will have to reverse the process.
In order to maximize the useable space in the RV after the items being carried are removed from the rear of the RV, and in order to save set up and take down time, there have been developed various folding RV furniture, including the invention disclosed in the inventor's U.S. Pat. No. 6,163,900. The inventor's folding RV furniture of U.S. Pat. No. 6,163,900 folds down from a sidewall of the RV. When not in use, the furniture can be folded back up against the wall and minimally extends into the space of the RV when not in use. Recently, there has been developed a system that uses rails mounted on the inside side walls of an RV to raise and lower furniture, e.g., beds, from a ceiling of the RV.
In the case of RVs that include a patio area formed in part from the drop down rear gate, may users of RV like to set up furniture on the patio area so that they can sit down and look straight out of their RV and enjoy nature. However, this requires that extra furniture be carried, stored and then deployed. It would be beneficial to have a multimodal sofa bed that permits a user to set up a sofa that faces either outside the back of the RV or inwardly into the RV. Moreover, it would be beneficial to have RV furniture that does not need to occupy wall space when not in use.